<?php
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Gay males can&apos;t donate blood?',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="card">
	<h2>Credit card issues</h2>
	<p>
		I decided to write to the banker that emailed me, saying I could ask them any questions I have with the account, instead of heading in in person.
		I thought it&apos;d be quicker.
		It wasn&apos;t, as they haven&apos;t responded.
		Hopefully they will tomorrow, or at least no later than in a few days.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Carbon dioxide pollution seems to be one of the most prominent affecting our world today.
			The strange part is that it doesn&apos;t (as far as I can tell) directly effect life on earth.
			The CO<sub>2</sub> levels are low enough not to cause difficulty in animal and fungal breathing, for example.
			(I&apos;ll ignore plants, as they <strong>*need*</strong> CO<sub>2</sub>, so it&apos;s obviously not going to interfere with <strong>*their*</strong> breathing.)
			However, the indirect effects are pretty devastating.
			It&apos;s changing our weather.
			Life is well-adapted to the previous climate, so when we change the climate, we break all the subtle balances that evolved into place.
			Entire spices are going extinct thanks to us.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		My accademic advisor got back to me, claimed it was always necessary to log in before being able to access the link to the student portal where one must log in a second time, recommended bookmarking, and claimed I should enable JavaScript in my Web browser.
		The bookmarking suggestion is just a way to get out of fixing the navigation menu they broke in the last update.
		Oh yeah, they also asked for a screenshot of the bug.
		As I described it as the website eating my coursework when JavaScript is enabled, I&apos;m not sure how I was supposed to screenshot that.
		Basically, something entered into the website doesn&apos;t go through.
		All I could screenshot is a page before I attempt to enter something or an after shot, where something wasn&apos;t entered.
		The rest of my thoughts can be seen from my response:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Dear <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span>,
		</p>
		<p>
			Actually, no, students *didn&apos;t* have to log in to find the portal link in the past.
			Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying.
			I&apos;ve *always* been able to go to the classroom website, not log in, then click the link to the student portal page.
			Even as recent as last term, when I was registering for courses for this term, I did so using the link previously available in the top navigation menu of all pages on that website pages, including the log in page itself, a page visible before entering log-in credentials.
			This link used to be present in the navigation menu at the top of the classroom website.
		</p>
		<p>
			As for bookmarking, it&apos;s a possibility, but Firefox has twelve main bookmarks.
			Any bookmarks beyond that have to be hidden away in the menus. The classroom website occupies one of my twelve bookmark choices, but the other eleven are occupied other things; there&apos;s no reason for the school to occupy two of those finite slots when it was previously able to occupy only one. Sure, I have the student portal bookmarked in the bookmarks menu, but it&apos;s more effort to locate that bookmark amongst the other several dozen bookmarks than it is to go to the classroom website from one of the twelve main bookmarks and just click the link to the student portal.
		</p>
		<p>
			I could (and definitely would) enable JavaScript in my Web browser if University of the People would fix the bug in their website that makes the website eat my coursework when JavaScript is enabled, but the university has refused to do so.
			This is a *serious* bug and the *only* way to fix it on my end is to disable JavaScript.
			The other option is for the school to fix the bug in the JavaScript, but I can&apos;t force you to fix your bugs.
			Sure, some websites break when JavaScript is disabled, but it&apos;s *ONLY poorly-designed websites* that do.
			Web developers with any real measure of skill don&apos;t write websites that fail to provide certain basic functionality when JavaScript is disabled (such as navigation).
			This is a well-known fact, and can easily be researched on any website explaining accessibility of websites.
			Even the well-respected Web standards group, the W3C, writes about this; their guidelines can easily be found by searching for &quot;W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines&quot;.
			JavaScript is a great tool for doing things that XHTML/HTML cannot (such as hot keys, scrollable maps, and other advanced functionality), but many uses of JavaScript these days are just replacements for basic functionality that can and should be in the XHTML/HTML.
			Remember, not everyone *can* enable JavaScript.
			Think, for example, of blind users using screen readers.
			Other disabilities and technical limitations of your users exist as well.
		</p>
		<p>
			I can&apos;t send screenshots, as the problem is that the website locks up for several seconds at a time, causing it to eat anything I type during that lock-up period. I&apos;ve had this issue in Firefox, and Chromium. If you have specific other browsers for me to try, I can do that, but it&apos;s not limited to just the one Web browser, and it&apos;s not a configuration issue on my end. I&apos;ve attached a video of the issue to this email. Twice in the recording, the website locked up and text was lost. The first time was in the first sentence typed, so it&apos;s harder to see, while the second time was in the second-to-last sentence, and resulted in the nonsense word &quot;ss&quot;. Both times, multiple words were lost.
		</p>
		<p>
			It&apos;s worth noting that this video shows the old classroom interface, as it&apos;s the exact same video I sent the tech team last time, but I tested today and the bug persists in the new interface.
			The video&apos;s example of the bug is still valid.
		</p>
		<p>
			The University of the People website is the *only* website on the entire face of the Web that I&apos;ve ever encountered this problem on, meaning again, this is a problem with the university website specifically.
			I&apos;m sure other sites exist with this problem, but they&apos;re in the vast minority.
			The problem is in the website, not the Web browser.
			According to the unofficial Firefox support people, the problem is likely AJAX requests.
			University of the People&apos;s website seems to make a bunch of AJAX requests on static pages like these submission forms, for no valid reason whatsoever.
			Unnecessary and frequent AJAX requests are a flaw in the website, not the Web browser, and no configuration on my end can change this problem except by disabling JavaScript completely, as Web browsers tend to be unable to disable only AJAX.
			My computer is plenty fast and is using the default settings.
			It is not slow or misconfigured.
			I&apos;ve tried from a second computer, and the website lock-up problem persists.
			Again, this shows the problem isn&apos;t on my end, but yours.
		</p>
		<p>
			With the issue most likely tied to AJAX requests, I theorise many other students might not notice because of faster connections.
			With the AJAX request completing sooner, the site would unlock sooner, causing maybe only a single character (or none) to be lost.
			If one character was lost, I&apos;d likely blame my fingers or my keyboard, and other students likely would as well.
			Even if other students do experience the problem in full effect like I do, they may not be complaining.
			I know I experience problems all the time and not complain, as there&apos;s not enough time in the day to follow up with every issue in every area of life.
			The fact remains though that these AJAX requests are completely unnecessary and are locking up the website temporarily.
			That needs to be fixed, likely by removing the frequent, pointless AJAX requests.
			They&apos;re causing a usability issue.
		</p>
		<p>
			I doubt technical support will care any more this time than they did last time.
			I&apos;m probably wasting my breath (er, keystrokes) going over this bug again, as it&apos;s nothing I haven&apos;t already told the support team.
			Still, hopefully they&apos;ll actually do their job and fix the broken website this time.
			I appreciate your trying to solve the problem by talking to them on my behalf though.
		</p>
		<p>
			Kind regards,<br/>
			~ Alex Yst
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="IRA">
	<h2>$a[IRA] issues</h2>
	<p>
		I decided against pestering the person in charge of the franchise my workplace is a part of.
		I&apos;ll try to catch them in person next time they drop by, but at the moment, I don&apos;t think there&apos;s as much of a rush as the $a[IRA] people claim.
		My current understanding is that while the person in charge didn&apos;t listen really to what I said, their statement that there&apos;s no bank account set up for the $a[IRA] people to take from is probably completely true.
		I do need to get this resolved, but there&apos;s a lot on my plate and I&apos;ll take the excuse to put this off for a bit.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="instructor">
	<h2>New driving instructor</h2>
	<p>
		I get frustrated with people and make plans for big confrontations, but I hardly ever follow through.
		I almost always opt for a softer approach.
		For example, you can read my plans to confront my supposed driving instructor in yesterday&apos;s log.
		They&apos;ve been stringing me along for three months, and it&apos;s been stressing me out.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, they, as expected, still haven&apos;t even <strong>*looked into*</strong> when they&apos;d have time to teach me, even though yesterday was about the time we were supposed to start.
		They were supposed to have figured out when they had available by now, so we could make this work.
		I didn&apos;t say hardly anything I&apos;d planned to, but I did make sure to let them know they were off the hook.
		Mainly, I said not to worry about it, and to forget I&apos;d asked.
		They tried to claim they&apos;d make sure to find time, because they&apos;d said they would, but I reiterated that they needn&apos;t do that, as I understood they were too busy.
		I wasn&apos;t sure if what I said was too subtle though, and I wasn&apos;t sure how to put it bluntly in a polite way, so I added that I&apos;d just need to save up for a driver&apos;s ed course.
		That should&apos;ve made it unambiguously clear that I wasn&apos;t continuing to expect their help.
		Of course, it was also partly a lie.
		Sure, there&apos;s a good chance I&apos;d <strong>*eventually*</strong> take a driver&apos;s ed course and get a license, it wouldn&apos;t be any time soon.
		If I fail to get my driver license before my permit expires, it&apos;ll be years before I get one at all.
		At a bare minimum, it&apos;ll be after I complete school.
		After that, it could still be several years if I don&apos;t need one right away.
	</p>
	<p>
		The thing about talking to coworkers in the workplace while one or both of you are on the clock is that you get overheard by other coworkers.
		Another coworker&apos;s now volunteered to help me.
		An exact time isn&apos;t set yet, but they say they&apos;ll help me this weekend, a much more specific and not so distant time frame.
		They said we can discuss the specific time and place to meet next time we work together, which will be in a couple days.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drawing">
	<h2>Drawing</h2>
	<p>
		The lucky ending digit for the week was ... two, I think.
		I got distracted and sort of forgot.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="blood">
	<h2>Blood drive</h2>
	<p>
		Near Bi-Mart, a blood drive was going on.
		Hilariously, the blood drive van was parked in a bank&apos;s parking lot.
		(Insert pun about blood banks here.)
		I decided to donate, and when they requested $a[ID].
		That was creepy, but I complied.
		However, they asked if I&apos;d donated through their company in the past.
		I should&apos;ve said &quot;no&quot;.
		Instead, I was honest and said I didn&apos;t think so, so they tried to look me up in their system.
		Apparently, while they require state-issued $a[ID] before taking donations, they don&apos;t use the associated $a[ID] number, just the legal name.
		When they couldn&apos;t find me in the system, they asked if I&apos;d ever changed my name in the past.
		Again, I was honest, but unlike with the question of whether or not I&apos;d donated in the past, I believe honesty was the only valid option for this question.
		They wanted my previous name, my birth name, which of course I don&apos;t give anyone unless legally required to do so.
		I&apos;ve always hated that name and I don&apos;t want it associated with me any more than it has to be.
		There was some back and forth, and I said I could leave without donating if I had to, but they wanted my blood so they decided to just set me up with a new profile as if I were a new donor without a check for my past identity, which I very likely actually was.
	</p>
	<p>
		They gave me a booklet to read and a questionnaire to fill out, and it seems they don&apos;t want blood from males that&apos;ve had sex with other males within the past year.
		I guess if I ever become sexually active, I won&apos;t be allowed to donate blood any more.
		Then again, I&apos;m not convinced my chances of finding love are all that great, so maybe the restriction won&apos;t affect me.
	</p>
	<p>
		At the end, they went to wrap my arm in medical tape to hold gauze on the needle hole and offered me a choice in tape colour.
		They showed me a basket of tape roles, and said purple was also available if I wanted.
		I didn&apos;t really care, but went with the purple, which they then found they were actually out of.
		They apologised, and I said it didn&apos;t matter as it was only going to stay on my arm for about four hours.
		They were surprised I&apos;d specified that particular time frame, saying it was exactly how long I was supposed to leave the tape on.
		I replied that the time frame had been stated in the booklet they&apos;d wanted me to read, and they were surprised I&apos;d actually read it.
		I guess most people lie about reading it or something, as the booklet says to make sure you read it all before getting blood drawn and the questionnaire specifically asks if you&apos;ve actually done so.
		It wasn&apos;t even a long read; I&apos;m not sure why people would try to get out of it.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
